Will Christian Parties Unite?

Message / Question

FFP has 1 in senate, 2 in SA's senate, DLP has 1 in Vic's senate, CDP has 2 in NSW's senate, Australian Christians has nothing. Dave, you've talked a lot about getting them to work together, do you think you hold the key? Dr Dave to help unite all Christian pollies :)?

Response

State Upper Houses are usually called Legislative Councils, only the Commonwealth upper house is called the Senate.

Now, regarding uniting Christian political parties. We have just had a double dissolution election in which the Parliament was prorogued and all senators were subject to election simultaneously. This usually doesn’t happen – because Senators (excluding those from the ACT and NT) are elected for 6 year terms, the “norm” is for a half Senate election to be held every 3 years. Because the election was for the full Senate, smaller parties had a much better chance of election because the size of the “quota” for election is halved. Usually, 14.7% of the vote is required (after distribution of preferences) to win a Senate seat, but in a full Senate election, the size of the quota is just 7.4%. It was fairly obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of Australian politics, that Mr Turnbull shot himself in the foot by creating a full Senate election (via the double dissolution) and expecting less cross benchers – the result was pretty much what I (and a lot of others) predicted; a small quota = more small party Senators. In 3 years, we will have another half Senate election, and when that happens under the new voting rules for the Senate, it will be a LOT harder for small parties to win seats. Results for this Senate election are still a long way off – they get the count sorted for the Reps first – so the actual results aren’t yet known, but looking at primary figures, it seems possible that CDP and FFP may end up with a seat each – but that (of course) depends on how preferences are distributed. Primary figures indicate that it would be highly unlikely for any of the Christian parties to have won a seat if this had been a half Senate election; so applying figures from this election to the next half Senate election, the small “Christian” parties won’t be in the hunt (the great line from “The Castle” applies to those who think otherwise: “tell him he’s dreaming!”).

My response to your question is a bit long for this blog – you can read it at http://www.drdaves.website/#!christian-party/czdbp